Mehmet Çiçek

Visual Representations in Richard Aldington’s London (May 1915) and Eros and Psyche

Through reading Walter Benjamin’s critical essay, Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia, the authors of this research would like to trace the key point of Surrealist aesthetics, particularly the juxtapositions of visual objects in the city of London. Richard Aldington’s two poems, London (May 1915) and Eros and Psyche, come to depict Surrealist image spheres, as their visual representations in words would show. The dialectical optic of the poet comes to reveal an allegorical synthesis, giving birth to new meanings. The city of London shows the irrational fusion of the opposites, in a way which a Surrealist reading of these two poems is able to construct a critical virtue.